The financial crisis led to a fundamental reassessment of the levels of capital banks needed to hold. Sir John will discuss whether the efforts to improve the safety of banks by making them hold higher levels of capital have gone far enough. He will outline why the Bank of England’s current proposals are insufficient to ensure a safe and stable banking sector. He will explain why we have not yet eliminated too-big-to-fail and why regulators are currently too optimistic about their ability to close down the big banks if they run into trouble.

Sir John is currently warden of All Souls College, Oxford. He chaired the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) which was established to consider structural reform of the banking sector. The ICB produced its report in 2011 and recommended higher bank capital, the introduction of ring-fencing of retail banking activities and measures to promote competition. The ICB’s recommendations were implemented by the Banking Reform Act 2013 and ring-fencing is scheduled to be introduced by 2019.

Sir John was Director General of the Office of Fair Trading between 2000 and 2005. Prior to that he was the Chief Economist at the Bank of England and sat on the Monetary Policy Committee between 1998 and 2000.